Dahoon Lee

Shared Light

Date

04 JUN 2025 27 JUN 2025 (3 Weeks)

Collaborative

At the summer solstice, could people in different cities “pass on” the same light and share it together? As the London team within a relay project connecting Hong Kong, London, and Vancouver/Seattle, we designed a real-time experience that merges two skies into one, drawing on British Impressionism as a cultural reference.

When the Sun Changes Hands

We wanted to design an experience centred on light at the point of the year’s longest day. Starting from the Hong Kong team’s cyanotype example, we developed a light-based experience grounded in a London cultural reference point.

From Culture to Refraction

Impressionism is closely associated with artistic approaches to light, so we used it as a reference within a UK and London context. We explored city experiences related to light, such as the story around the “Walkie-Talkie” building and the way Londoners head to parks when the sun comes out. We then looked to material qualities of light such as prisms and refraction, and concluded that translating urban light into an artistic experience through simple physical transformation could be meaningful.

Light is both a physical phenomenon and a culturally shaped sensation, and that even simple analogue transformations can translate “a city’s light” into experience.

Analogue Filtering, Real-Time Sharing

An experience that generates an Impressionist-like sky in real time using a cup of water and a plastic tube.

We experimented with analogue filtering by using a cup of water to transform the London sky. We recreated a similar effect using a clear plastic tube, then, drawing on the relay format, designed a real-time experience that composites the skies of London and Vancouver/Seattle. We also collected light data under tree shade and translated it into sound, designing the on-site audio structure alongside the visual experience.

What Two Cities Can Hold Together

This project explored how a cultural reference can be translated into an experience through light as a medium. It also made us imagine an extension, such as a “window-like” project that relays light between two distant places and lets people experience them together.

Credits

Created by

Light Project - Team London

UX Design

Dahoon Lee
Aslı Ateş
Chen Chen
Chaitanya Tiwari (Chazzo)
Qianyu Gu (Grania)
Shanshan Li
Stav Perry
Wanrui Ren
Yanshan Wu
Zetong Zhang (Zoe)

Video Compositing

Dahoon Lee
Chaitanya Tiwari (Chazzo)

Sound Design

Chen Chen

Dahoon Lee

In Collaboration with

PolyU Design
University of Washington HCDE
Emily Carr University of Art + Design

Mentored by

Alaistair Steele